Arches National Park Photo Guide: Off the beaten path (part 4)

Tower Arch isn’t the largest arch in the park, but it’s tall enough to accommodate a 4-story building. If someone were climbing the face of the tower behind the arch, they’d look smaller than a sugar ant crawling up your finger. I’ve taken some shots of the arch without realizing people were standing there.

Unlike Delicate Arch, you might actually sit down and eat your lunch in solitude. We have never seen more than a handful of people on any outing there. In Tower Arch Close-up (above), I spent some time in Photoshop bringing out the detail. Normally midday shots are much more subdued. Early morning the face is in shadow, and I’ve never been there at sunset.

While there, you might want to lie on your back and look up. I used my 12mm lens and still had to hand stitch 3 images together to create the shot. Photomerge wouldn’t handle the task.

I strongly recommend exploring the area. North of Tower Arch is a bowl surrounded by the white-capped pinnacles. Looking back toward the arch you can just see the tops of the La Sals in Klondike Storm 2. The sky is a composite of 4 skies. The area is so surreal anyway that the sky seems to work with the landscape.

Down in the bowl there’s a wash and a fair amount of foliage. No matter which way you turn you’ll find pictures like this one, titled Klondike Bowl.

Next is an image titled Klondike Fins, although these fins are more like jumbled remnants. Until you look at an aerial photo, you don’t realize that all these formations run in rows.

The layer of white is only prominent in the very top layer, which is very evident in Stormy Day. This is one of my earliest shots of the area.

Klondike Overview is one of my most recent shots of the area, and the only time I’ve climbed to the top from the northeast side. The bowl forms in the space just past the white caps in the foreground.